Q1 2015 Book Challenge Update

The first quarter of 2015 is behind us and I’m still powering through these book challenges. I am going for the Book Riot and Pop Sugar list separately. This means I will fulfill some categories twice. And I want to avoid duplicates. So each book will only be used for one category. This will take me longer than a year and that’s fine by me. I never want reading to become homework. I don’t have a list of “To Read” books. I just read books as I see them or hear about them. And 99% of what I read comes from the library. I am reading books other than specifically for the challenges. But they certainly are helping me broaden my general reading fare.

Here’s the challenges I’ve completed so far, with the book and author, and my subjective rating.

Book Riot Challenges

A book published by an indie press: The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison (3/5)

A book by or about someone that identifies as LGBTQ: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters (2/5)

A book by a person whose gender is different from your own: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by David Shafer (4/5)

A YA novel: The Girl From the Well by Rin Chupeco (3/5)

A sci-fi novel: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (2/5)

An audiobook: World War Z by Max Brooks (4/5)

A collection of poetry: Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (3/5)

A book that was originally published in another language: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (3/5)

My motivation for doing these challenges was to get outside my usual comfort zone of books, and I definitely did. That was the first audio book I’ve ever read and I loved it. I also rarely read poetry collections, so that was very interesting. And even the YA novel, which I was dreading, wasn’t that bad.

Pop Sugar Challenges

A book with more than 500 pages: NOS4A2 by Joe Hill (4/5)

A funny book: Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet (3/5)

A book by a female author: Into The Go-Slow by Bridgett Davis (3/5)

A book with a one-word title: Thrown by Kerry Howley (3/5)

A nonfiction book: The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert (3/5)

A book based entirely on its cover: Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux (3/5)

A trilogy: The Magicians by Lev Grossman (3/5)

I was dreading reading a trilogy so I got that out of the way quickly; powering through them all as though it were one long story. It was worth it as I really enjoyed it. However, I still think I’ll typically avoid trilogies as I just don’t have the attention span. Really.